Got a problem with my sisters's PC, it started with a Windows stop message on boot 'unmountable boot volume'. Unfortunately it's a Packard Bell which did not ship with system disks, you have to create them yourself and she never did so my options were limited..... I used 'Ultimate Boot CD for Windows' (http://www.ubcd4win.com/) and got onto the PC, at this point it wouldn't recognise the c: drive or let me connect to it but I was able to run 'chkdsk c: /r' which fixed a few things and afterwards was able to access the c: drive. Now when I try to boot from c: the Windows startup screen and progress bar appears and I hear the HDD being accessed but after about 5 or 10 seconds the monitor switches off i.e. into power save mode. I can hear the HDD is still being accessed but the screen never comes back to life, if I press the power switch on the PC it sounds like it does a controlled shutdown before powering off. Any ideas or suggestions to next steps? Using UBCD4Win I can connect to a USB stick, does anyone know where on a Packard Bell I can find the files needed to create the system disks, if so I could copy them to the USB drive and burn her a set using my PC so she can re-install Windows with them? Thanks Nick
Makes me think something has gone wrong resolution wise as it all seems to be booting up fine but the screen goes into power saving mode. I would suggest trying to boot into safe mode see if that helps, a resetting of the BIOS may help things if still no luck. Alternatively try a different monitor? Regarding the restore CDs... does the computer not have a separate partition for restoring so you don't need restore discs? There is normally a little software tool that initiates the procedure. Hope that's of some help
You weren't far wrong, the PC booted fine in safe-mode and there was nothing unusual about the resolution, which got me thinking. Turns out she had connected both VGA and DVI cables from the computer to the monitor, at some point during normal Windows boot the PC switched from an analogue signal to digital but the monitor sensed this as no-signal and went into power save, after making sure the monitor source was set to digital everything worked. Sometimes you can overcomplicate these things when trying to fix a problem! Thanks for the help.
